Creating a Couples Pose with Two Rigs Using Blender & CLIPTool

This tutorial will show you how to create a couple’s pose in
Blender using two rigs at the same time. Each can then be exported
separately into its own .package. This method makes it easy to
move back and forth between each rig while you work on both poses rather
than just being able to work on one at a time. This will speed up
your work and allow greater precision.

Note: this tutorial assumes you have already done the Complete Pose
Tutorial Using Blender & CLIPTool: For Sim and Animal Poses that I
wrote. That tutorial is HERE.

It also assumes you have downloaded the rig file that A created to work with the ClipTool. If you don’t have it get it HERE.

Note: You will still probably have to use the Move Objects cheat to position your poses in game.

Preparation

1. Create a working folder and inside it create two new folders. Name one folder pose1 and the other folder pose2.

Create Your Poses

1. Open Blender and Open the a2a_soc.blend.

2. Before doing anything else click the Object Data button as shown below. It will be on the right side of your screen.

3. Slide the right side slider until you see X-Ray and the box next to it. Put a check in the box.

4. Put your mouse in the 3D view box and right click the line on the male rig as shown in picture.

5. Repeat step 3 above by putting a check mark in the X-Ray box.

6. Now that the joints are visible on the two rigs click into Pose Mode as shown below.

7. Click on the other rig and repeat step 6.

8. With both rigs in Pose Mode you can now make your couple’s
pose. You can switch back and forth between the two rigs as you
go. You may find it helpful to switch into User Persp at times to
see through the rigs. To do this click 5 on your number pad.
To go back to Ortho view click 5 again. You’ll be able to tell
which view mode you’re in by looking in the upper left corner of the 3D
View box.

9. When your poses are complete select a joint on one of the rigs and
then click the letter a on your computer keyboard twice to select all
the joints. When they are all selected they will turn light blue.

10. Once the joints are all light blue on one of the rigs click i on
your keyboard to get the Insert Keyframe Menu. Choose LocRot from the
menu when it pops up.

11. Now click File in the upper left corner of Blender. Choose
Export and then choose Sims 3 Animation (.animation). Name the
pose and save it in folder 1 inside your working folder. If you
need to see an illustration for this there is one in my toddler pose
tutorial.

12. Now select a joint on the other rig. Again click a until
all the joints on the second rig turn light blue. Once they are
light blue click i on your computer keyboard and again choose LocRot
once the Insert Keyframes Menu comes up.

13. Export this one just like you did the first but this time save it in the Pose2 folder inside your working folder.

14. Now package each of the poses as you usually do and test your poses in game.

If you have questions about the tutorial or run into problems following it please leave a comment detailing the issue.

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19 thoughts on “Creating a Couples Pose with Two Rigs Using Blender & CLIPTool”

Hi, I think I asked this question before on here, but we’ll give it another shot. I only have a basic working knowledge of Blender, at best, and when I open the a2a rig file, it only shows the proxys for the rigs, not the rigs themselves. How do I resolve this problem? Thanks!

Hi Ashley,
Please make sure that you have the latest set of rigs, and that when you unzip them you leave them in the multi-rigs folder. They need to be inside that subfolder or they won’t be able to reference the single sim rigs properly.

I don’t understand what you mean by this, I’m having the exact same problem and have no idea why. All my rigs are up to date but when i open blender and open the a2a_soc blend it only shows proxys. PLEASE help!

I’m working on couples poses and have followed the above almost exactly (except that the xray box was already checked.) The other difference is that I’m importing existing animation files instead of starting from scratch as the poses were mostly finished before this point. When I go to export the female pose everything works fine. When I go to export the male pose it takes a little while and when it comes back it’s back at the original imported .animation and he’s turned backwards. When I look at the .animation in the folder the file size is usually around 30 kb instead of the usual 6 or 7 kb. Also, I am using Blender 2.67b. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Alright. So sorry, but another little bit playing with it and I finally figured out what it was doing. It was taking my updated male rig and making it the start of an animation that morphed it to the starting position. When I tried to stop this behavior it gave me an error in the a2a_soc.blend file with a couple of line names. If I had had the presence of mind to write them down I would have to give them to you. I’m very sorry I did not (frustration and beer make thinking a little fuzzier than it ought.) Until then, your wonderful instructions on Posing With Multiple Rigs of Your Choice works just fine and I’ll just do that. Thank you for your time.